Victor Rebengiuc, Coca Bloos, Razvan Vasilescu, Micaela Caracas, Serban Pavlu, Dorina Chiriac, Marius Galea, Andreea Bibiri, Irina Ardelean

Synopsis:

Niki is a retired colonel. His son has just died in an accident, his daughter is married to the son of Flo, his neighbour from across the street; the young couple are getting ready to leave Romania for the U.S. for good. Flo, a bohemian left-over from the seventies, is into a lot of things, he's a home-video fan and a closet tyrant who takes everything out on Niki.

Flo strips Niki of everything: his few possessions, his moral values, even his own self-image and personal dignity. Everything that goes into making a man a man.

Then comes the ultimate humiliation, Flo forces Niki and his wife to dress up as cartoon characters…

But the day of the National Army Day, spurred on by fanfare, Niki puts on his uniform, picks up a hammer and crosses the street to Flo's house…

“Niki & Flo is not a political film, it is an absurd film through which deplorable and pathetic characters thread the path towards murder. It is a film that only tells how come murder gets to be committed, but it does so in a manner never before used in an account of a murder. Niki & Flo narrates an inexplicable crime, a crime that its real witnesses will never get to understand. In short - experienced at its level, this crime is incomprehensible. Nobody from the family, or any of the neighbours, will ever be able to explain why Niki killed Flo. By detaching oneself, by becoming a spectator, the absurd is decanted and everything becomes incredibly clear.” ( Lucian Pintilie )

“As in ‘The Oak' or ‘Too Late', a tragic tinge of the burlesque leads to an explosion when everyone least expects it. From this clash of previously irreconcilable situations, arises a desperate and terribly lucid black humour, which condenses the vision of the filmmaker's world.” (Franck Garbarz, in Positif, no. 509-510, July-August 2003, pg 93)

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